A Weblog by One Humble Bookman on Topics of Interest to Discerning Readers, Including (Though Not Limited To) Science Fiction, Books, Random Thoughts, Fanciful Family Anecdotes, Publishing, Science Fiction, The Mating Habits of Extinct Waterfowl, The Secret Arts of Marketing, Other Books, Various Attempts at Humor, The Wonders of New Jersey, the Tedious Minutiae of a Boring Life, Science Fiction, No Accounting (For Taste), And Other Weighty Matters.

Who Is This Hornswoggler?

Andrew Wheeler has worked in book publishing for 25 years. He spent 16 years as a bookclub editor (for the SFBC and others), and is now does marketing for Wiley. He was a judge for the 2005 World Fantasy Awards and the 2008 Eisner Awards. He also reviewed a book a day for a year (and he's doing it again now!). He lives with The Wife and two mostly tame sons (Thing One, born 1998; and Thing Two, born 2000) at an unspecified location in suburban New Jersey. He has been known to drive a minivan, and nearly all of his writings are best read in a tone of bemused sarcasm. Antick Musings’s manifesto is here. All opinions expressed here are entirely and purely those of Andrew Wheeler, and no one else.

Saturday, February 11, 2006

Another first today: my first damaged box. (Not one your more fun "firsts," as you might imagine.)

It was supposed to be a box with all of the Locus magazines for 2005 (for their reviews of the fantasies that came out last year), plus the February 2006 issue (which had the Recommended Reading List and the summaries for 2005 -- great resources for what we're doing). Unfortunately, the box had come open somewhere in the process, and there were only eight of the thirteen issues still present. (Though, interestingly, none of the issues that arrived showed any sign of wear, dog-earing, or other scuffling, as might be caused by a box breaking open in a mail-sorting machine.)

So, a note to myself: bug the Locus people on Monday for the missing issues. And I now have some more stuff to skim and/or read (since I've already read through all but the new issue already).

3 comments:

I don't think I have it as bad as you do. I got a semi-apologetic postman from a truck explaining that the box mysteriously opened in transit, and telling me to talk to someone at the post office if anything was missing. (Yeah. As if that would do anything.)

Houston, TX, actually, but I grew up on Long Island. (I am intimately aware that East Coasters tend to think of the U.S. as The East Coast, The West Coast and "everything in-between! :))

Lately, my mail is alternatively delivered by a postman and postwoman, as if the suburban route were too hard. The postwoman tends to not immediately deliver any review copies of books, but rather saves them up to make a trip to our door worth the effort. Sigh. A daily book delivery like yours would probably cause her to quit. :)